<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
<title>Family Is What You Make It by Maltheniel</title>
<style type="text/css">

body { background-color: #ffffff; }
.CI {
text-align:center;
margin-top:0px;
margin-bottom:0px;
padding:0px;
}
.center   {text-align: center;}
.cover    {text-align: center;}
.full     {width: 100%; }
.quarter  {width: 25%; }
.smcap    {font-variant: small-caps;}
.u        {text-decoration: underline;}
.bold     {font-weight: bold;}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/25326349">Family Is What You Make It</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Maltheniel/pseuds/Maltheniel'>Maltheniel</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>The Once and Future King [12]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Merlin (TV)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Elyan sees life in color, Found Family, Gen, and in terms of the family he has and the family he finds, from his childhood til after he comes back, in which we see highlights of Elyan's life</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-07-17</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-07-17</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-05 04:07:48</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>10,607</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/25326349</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Maltheniel/pseuds/Maltheniel</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Elyan's family is perfect and golden when he's young, between him and Gwen and their parents. Then they lose their mother, and Elyan leaves home, and the gold has all faded away.</p><p>But he still has Gwen, and eventually he finds brotherhood with his fellow knights as well. It's hard-fought and hard-won now, but eventually Elyan will realize that his world has once more turned to gold.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Elyan &amp; Arthur Pendragon (Merlin), Elyan &amp; Gwen (Merlin), Elyan &amp; Merlin (Merlin)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>The Once and Future King [12]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1774627</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>5</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>33</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Family Is What You Make It</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>When Elyan was young, life was perfect.</p><p>His father earned an honest living every day at the forge; his mother took him with her occasionally to her work as a maid in the household of Sir Ector and Lady Adelina; he had a little sister who stared at him with wide brown eyes and laughed when he teased her. She was beginning to learn to sew the patterns her mother set her with pudgy little hands.</p><p>When he thought back on his childhood later, there was a golden tinge to all his memories, never mind that golden magic was outlawed. There was no other color that summed up the warmth and love of his early childhood.</p><p> </p><p>And then came the winter his mother died.</p><p>She didn't die in the winter, actually; she lingered through it, coughing and sick the whole time. Lady Adelina came regularly to check up on their mother after she could no longer work; Father fulfilled very few commissions at the forge, spending most of his time at home; and Elyan and Gwen did what they could of the housework and hovered by their mother's bed.</p><p>Together, they eased Mother into the spring.</p><p>She got to see the spring she loved, the flowers blooming and the birds singing in the trees. She got one last spring.</p><p>After the day she died, nothing was the same.</p><p> </p><p>Elyan was, according to the accusations Gwen flung at him, "always in the wrong place at the wrong time." Father buried himself in the forge, too grief-stricken to do much else, and Gwen flung herself into the role of mother, trying to fill up the gaps left behind. She found all her mother's patterns and started sewing them herself.</p><p>More often than not, Elyan fled the house, wanting to get away from his father's silent grief and Gwen's well-meaning but too energetic efforts to fill the silence. He could remember the old, golden days too well to enjoy the new ones, brushed with painful, fragile blue.</p><p>Unfortunately, the boys who ran in the streets were not the most excellent set he could have thrown in his lot with. Hence a lot of street fights, black eyes, bloody noses, shouting neighbors, tired sighs from his father, and disapproving looks from Gwen.</p><p>In spite of it all, though, Gwen was always there for him. She was the one who cooked for both Elyan and Father, the one who repaired their clothes and sewed new ones for them when the old ones wore out. She was the one who tracked Elyan down in whatever random street corners he got himself beaten up in, who nursed his wounds and loved him continually. Gwen was the one who raised him more than anyone else, perhaps.</p><p>But overhanging it all, was the distant, hovering fear that those who in the wrong place at the wrong time in Camelot wound up dead on accusations of magic.</p><p> </p><p>The tension over Uther's treatment of magic had been rising for their family in the past few weeks before one afternoon when Elyan was in the marketplace, making purchases for Gwen and the forge.</p><p>Somewhere in the distance, he heard a commotion. He was so absorbed in bartering for wool, though, that he didn't notice until someone suddenly clutched his arm tightly.</p><p>"Gwen!" he exclaimed, when he had gotten over startling and looked down.</p><p>She was clinging to him as though her life depended on in. "Oh, Elyan," she gasped, panting. "Elyan – I heard that there was a scuffle downtown and they arrested a young man for having magic."</p><p>"And you thought it was me," Elyan said. He tried to say it scornfully, but it came out shaking instead.</p><p>Gwen nodded, wide-eyed.</p><p>Elyan bought the wool overpriced and went home with Gwen clinging to his arm.</p><p>"I need to leave Camelot," he said as soon as they got home.</p><p>Gwen and Father stared at him.</p><p>"We all know it," Elyan pressed. "You're both terrified for me every time I leave the house. This can't go on."</p><p><em>And Camelot has been stifling me ever since Mother died,</em> he thought but did not say. <em>I need to leave.</em></p><p>His father and Gwen would get on fine, after all; his father had the forge, and Gwen had a good job at the castle as the personal maidservant of the Lady Morgana.</p><p>His father nodded grimly, and Gwen swallowed.</p><p>"Give me a day," she said. "Let me get together things you should take."</p><p>Elyan agreed. He could submit to that much mothering one last time.</p><p>Gwen stayed up nearly until dawn that night finishing sewing sturdy shirts for him to take with him.</p><p>The next morning at dawn, the sword his father had taught both him and Gwen to use at his hip and Gwen's bundle on his back, he hugged his father and Gwen goodbye. Gwen trailed him to the door.</p><p>"You will write," she said. "Promise me you will write."</p><p>"Of course," Elyan said. He squeezed her hand and set off toward the gate. The dawn light gleamed red on the white castle walls and turned the whole day red.</p><p>Elyan had every intention of writing.</p><p>He never did.</p><p> </p><p>There was a freedom he hadn't dreamed of in being out on his own, with nothing but his sword and the skills his father had taught him at the forge between him and death or starvation, a thrill in no one thinking he was a troublemaker and liable to get himself killed. He enjoyed making new connections with strangers, but usually moved on before anyone could get to know him too well.</p><p>Elyan thought often of Gwen to begin with and intended to write back to her, but he could never figure out how to tell her that he was enjoying his life in the countryside more than he had ever enjoyed his life in Camelot. He knew she had seen his departure as a bit of a betrayal; ever since their mother died, keeping the family intact and happy had been her greatest goal, and his leaving had put a giant hole in what remained of their family. Admitting that he enjoyed his wanderings more than he had his quiet life in Camelot was not something he thought he could say to his little sister.</p><p>Later on, once the sheen had worn off traveling and it had acquired shades of lonely gray to join the exciting red, Elyan thought often about writing Gwen. But by that time it had been too long, and he no longer knew what he could say to her, and he simply . . . didn't write anything at all.</p><p>He still wore her shirts long past when most would have advised replacing them.</p><p> </p><p>"Have you heard the news from Camelot?" one trader asked another, at a little inn Elyan was dining in. He didn't even know exactly what kingdom it was in, but somewhere near enough to Camelot for the news to be of interest, apparently.</p><p>"Another execution?" the other trader grunted, obviously more interested in his brew than the story.</p><p>"For nothing more than trading with a sorcerer," the first trader said in disgust. "And the village blacksmith too! How wasteful is that king determined to be?" There was scorn in his words, carefully covering an undertone of fear.</p><p>But Elyan's heart had dropped into his boots and his throat had swelled almost shut. He got up and took two steps toward the traders.</p><p>"You said the village blacksmith?" he forced past a choked throat. "A man named Tom?"</p><p>The trader with the news looked up quickly, a flash of sympathy passing over his face. "I'm afraid so, my lad," he said. "You knew him, didn't you? I'm right sorry."</p><p>Elyan could find no words to return to the stranger's kindness. He turned and staggered out of the room without seeing anything. He made his way upstairs to the room he had taken, curled himself into a small ball, and pressed his hands hard over his eyes.</p><p>When he left Camelot, he had meant to take the threat of execution for magic with him. He had known, of course, that if someday he was arrested for having magic, Gwen and his father would by no means be spared, but he had thought he had made them safe. Never in a million years had he dreamed the stroke would fall in his absence.</p><p>Never in all his life had he felt so alone.</p><p> </p><p>Several days later and three towns away, it occurred to Elyan that he should really write Gwen now, or better yet go home. She was after all alone now too. He picked up a quill and hovered it over parchment half a dozen times.</p><p>But somehow Elyan couldn't bring himself to do it. He couldn't bring himself to say that he was sorry the blow had fallen after he had tried to remove all threat of it. He couldn't say that he didn't know how his father could be so stupid as to trade with a sorcerer.</p><p>All the sheen was gone from his childhood now, his days a wash of dark gray, and the tie to even Gwen felt looser than ever. She belonged to the distant past, to the happy world he had known when he was a young child, and he didn't know how to try returning to that world.</p><p>In the end, Elyan decided the best thing to do would be to try making his way in this new world and let Gwen make hers. He prayed she had someone to comfort her in Camelot, and settled down to use his father's skill at a forge in Essetir.</p><p> </p><p>That plan lasted until the day his forge was stormed.</p><p>On some level, Elyan had been expecting it to happen every day since his mother died.</p><p>At least the soldiers wore turbans, not red cloaks, though, so he wasn't going to burn on a pyre in Camelot.</p><p>By the time he'd spent a week chained to the wall in a damp dungeon, however, he thought he might almost have preferred that.</p><p> </p><p>There came a day when he was dragged out of the dungeons blindfolded, and he was convinced that he was about to be executed for some unstated reason. His last thought as he was forced to his knees was an intense longing for Gwen.</p><p>So when the mask was whipped off his head and he heard Gwen's voice gasp his name, his first thought was that he had somehow bypassed remembering his death altogether and they were with each other on the other side.</p><p>A moment later he came back to his senses and realized that they were kneeling side by side before that wretch Cenred and a pack of his troops, and that Gwen herself, disheveled and clutching her wrists, was staring at him with wide, disbelieving eyes.</p><p>"Gwen!" he cried, and sprang forward to hug her as she sprang into his arms.</p><p>However much Elyan hated Cenred, he would be eternally grateful for leaving their arms unbound at that moment. He clung to his sister and she clung to him like they could never bear to be parted, and for a moment the world turned a brilliant gold. He knew he wasn't dead yet, and terrifying as the situation was he was glad.</p><p>"Brother and sister reunited," Cenred said sarcastically in the background, his voice breaking into their reunion in a most unwelcome way. "It warms the heart."</p><p>Elyan let go of Gwen enough to wrap his arm around her shoulders and look up at the wretched king. "What do you want from us?" he demanded, wishing he had his sword on him.</p><p>Cenred brandished a small, curved knife, and Elyan pulled Gwen back as far as he could lean. If the king made one move with that knife, he'd fling himself in front of his sister and let the wound or death fall on him.</p><p>"All in good time," was Cenred's only comment, and not an encouraging one at that.</p><p>He left the room, his men on his heels. The moment Cenred was out of the room, Gwen sat back on her heels and stared at Elyan.</p><p>"Why are we here, Elyan?" she demanded. "What have you done?"</p><p>Elyan rather deserved that, he knew, but it hurt, as did the obvious fear in her eyes. Whenever he had thought about being reunited with his sister, he had never wanted it to be like this.</p><p>"I didn't do anything, I promise," he said quickly. "I swear," he added vehemently, to his sister's skeptical eyes. "I was at my forge and they just came for me," he told her, desperate to be believed. "I tried to resist, but they drugged me. There was nothing I could do."</p><p>Gwen curled into herself and said nothing.</p><p>Elyan glanced over his shoulder toward the doors he had heard locked a minute before. "What would a man like Cenred want with us," he said, feeling horribly out of his depth.</p><p>"I wish I knew," Gwen replied, and he thought from her tone that she rather thought he should know.</p><p>Elyan turned back to Gwen, curled there on the enemy's floor, disheveled and afraid, and reached out, longing to hold her and comfort her a little in this strange reprieve. But Gwen held up a warning hand, and Elyan stopped moving at once. Gwen hesitated, and curled her hand back toward herself.</p><p>Elyan deserved her anger, he knew, even as it washed out his world and turned it dark blue. He hadn't written her in four years after promising he would, and she would have had no way of knowing news about him. But he determined firm and sure, in that moment, that if they both lived long enough he would prove to Gwen that he had changed and become a man, that he was no longer the troublemaker at the root of every problem. He would be the brother to her he should always have been.</p><p> </p><p>Cenred took cruel delight in informing Elyan that he had let Gwen go and given her a choice. Either she brought back her lover, whom Cenred apparently wanted, or Elyan would die. Cenred took a great deal of pleasure in spelling out exactly how.</p><p>Elyan kept his face carefully neutral, but after he was escorted back to his cell he curled himself in a corner and gave himself up to despair. There was no way the angry Gwen of a few days ago would risk the man she loved over the brother who always got in trouble, and even if his inner mind whispered that there was no way Gwen would ever give up on him, he knew she would be far smarter to this time. And he would die happy knowing she was safe.</p><p> </p><p>There came an afternoon, a few days later, when a great tumult arose in the castle, ending with Gwen being flung into his cell. Elyan scrambled to his feet and moved to catch her from her fall. She accepted his touch, and then moved to sit by herself against the wall. Elyan propped himself up a few feet away from her.</p><p>Gwen stared at her knees and said nothing.</p><p>Elyan couldn't deny that his heart had leaped in the knowledge that his little sister still believed in him, but her loyalty had made everything worse.</p><p>"You shouldn't've come back for me, Gwen," he said wearily, breaking the silence. She looked up at him, and Elyan couldn't quite meet her eyes. "What were you thinking?"</p><p>"You're probably right," Gwen said quietly. "You'd think I'd've learnt by now."</p><p>But her tone was gently teasing, not biting as it had been the other day, and Elyan relaxed a little.</p><p>"I only hope Arthur can think of something," Gwen added.</p><p>Elyan stopped in pacing across the cell. "Arthur," he pressed. This was the first time he'd heard the name of Gwen's mysterious lover, and his mind had instantly flown to the Arthur who had been prince when he'd left Camelot. Cenred would want that man, for sure, but there was no way it was the same Arthur.</p><p>"Prince Arthur," Gwen clarified. "I came with him."</p><p>And nope. Gwen's lover must be the other man he'd seen dragged down to the cells, because there was no way the Prince Arthur Gwen had complained about constantly now loved her.</p><p>"Prince Arthur of Camelot," Elyan clarified, mystified.</p><p>"Yes, Elyan," Gwen replied in the old exasperated way, "Prince Arthur of Camelot."</p><p>"Why would he want to help you?" Elyan demanded.</p><p>"Why shouldn't he?" Gwen asked, as if going on dangerous missions for servant girls was something princes did every other day.</p><p>"Uh, because he's a prince and you're a servant," Elyan replied, not believing he had to spell it out.</p><p>"He doesn't care about that sort of thing," Gwen burst out passionately. "He's – you know –" and then she stumbled over what word to end with. "Chivalrous," she chose at last.</p><p>So Prince Arthur of Camelot was his sister's lover. Would wonders never cease.</p><p>"Right," Elyan said, rubbing his chin. "So he's like that with all the maids in Camelot?" Because it was always a brother's duty to tease his sister.</p><p>"No," Gwen said quickly. Then, "Yes," in a way he could tell was false. "I mean—" she stammered and looked away with a sigh.</p><p>Well, that settled it. Elyan permitted himself a delightedly disbelieving smile and shook his head. His sister a princess!</p><p>"It seems that things have changed for you, Guinevere," he said, sliding down to sit against the wall. Changed indeed, if the prince who had annoyed her to death four years ago could now render her speechless.</p><p>"Yes, I suppose they have," she admitted, a bit huffily.</p><p>"I'm glad," Elyan said sincerely, and meant it from the depths of his heart.</p><p>Gwen picked up a bit of straw and started shredding it, glancing at him out of the corners of her eyes.</p><p>Once upon a time it would have been that she would have spilled all her heart about any young man to him, and Elyan felt her silence keenly. And the edge to her voice. And the way she wouldn't let her touch him.</p><p>"You're angry with me, aren't you," he said.</p><p>"A bit," Gwen admitted quietly.</p><p>Elyan breathed in and out, and didn't know what to say.</p><p>"Where have you been, Elyan?" Gwen demanded.</p><p>"Here and there," he answered restlessly, getting up to pace again, because a full answer with all the details wasn't something either of them wanted to talk about right now.</p><p>"It's been four years since you left, and not a word," Gwen shot at him, her tone sharpened with anger and with tears. "You could have been dead, for all I knew."</p><p>"I mean to get in touch," Elyan protested, feeling the weakness of his excuse even as he voiced it. "It just never seemed like the right moment."</p><p>"So, when our father died," Gwen whispered, her voice edged with tears, "wasn't that the right moment either."</p><p>Elyan looked down for a moment, remembering those days of gray, all the moments when he nearly put quill to parchment, the isolation and the loneliness and the inability to find any words.</p><p>"I'm sorry," was all he could find to say.</p><p>He moved to sit by her, and this time she didn't move away.</p><p>"I haven't been much help, have I?" he asked, and then glanced at his sister. She met his eyes, but her smile was barely there and not much of a smile at all.</p><p>And then the prince and his servant made their grand entrance, and all conversation was at an end for the time.</p><p> </p><p>"Someone will have to ride double," Prince Arthur announced, after they were all reunited at the camp and Elyan had apparently impressed the prince a bit with his skill with a sword. It wasn't as if he had let what his father had taught him slip.</p><p>Gwen turned and looked up at Elyan. "Are you coming back to Camelot?" she asked, and there was an edge to her voice again. She took his arm and held it tight in both small, strong. hands.</p><p>"Or we can arrange for your escort wherever you wish to go," the prince offered courteously.</p><p>But Gwen was still holding Elyan's eyes with hers, and there was a plea and a hope in them. The world washed faintly yellow.</p><p>Perhaps it wasn't impossible for the halcyon days of his childhood to be real again. At least perhaps it wasn't impossible to repair his relationship with Gwen.</p><p>And there was a prince in Camelot now who would risk his life for ordinary serving girls; that was a tremendous change from when Elyan had been there last. Recent events had proved that Essetir was no longer safe for him.</p><p>"I'm coming back to Camelot," he said firmly.</p><p>Gwen's face brightened suddenly with the warm flash of a smile, and the yellow burned brighter.</p><p>"Great!" Arthur said cheerfully – and yeah, the idea of his sister being in love with anyone was a bit hard to swallow. "You can ride with Merlin."</p><p>"Why me?" Merlin complained, but he said it as lightheartedly as the prince had made his comment.</p><p>"Because you're the skinniest out of all of us, beanpole," the prince shot back.</p><p>"Oh, now you think you can make nicknames," Merlin groused, but he let Elyan ride back with him.</p><p>You couldn't ride back to Camelot on a horse with someone without getting to know them a bit. By the time they got back to Camelot, Elyan had realized that Merlin could be very talkative, but he could also be very quiet, and he had secrets he had probably never told anyone. Elyan knew what that looked like from the mirror. He could tell that Merlin and Gwen were friends, and that gave him a weird mixture of happiness and jealousy, for some reason. He tried to shake the jealousy off; it was good if Gwen had found support, and he had no right to wish it had come from him.</p><p>Elyan also thought that he would very likely give his life for Merlin, if they were ever in pitched battle together.</p><p> </p><p>Back in Camelot, Gwen took Elyan home.</p><p>Elyan stood in the entryway and stared around for a long moment. He expected his father to come out any moment, scold him as Gwen had for being gone so long, and welcome him back with a hug. He expected, somehow, that his mother would come out, bright and smiling, and embrace him.</p><p>But the house was still and cold, silent except for Gwen going around lighting candles, and Elyan swallowed a lump in his throat.</p><p>"It hasn't changed much, has it?" he asked, coming in and shutting the door.</p><p>"Not as much as we've changed," Gwen conceded. She sank to the floor with a sigh.</p><p>Elyan came to sit by her.</p><p>"Did I say earlier I was sorry for not writing?" he asked.</p><p>"I think you did," Gwen answered. She leaned her head against the wall and didn't look at him.</p><p>"If I didn't," Elyan said, "I truly am sorry."</p><p>Gwen drew a long sigh. She still didn't look at him.</p><p>"Father was killed for associating with a sorcerer," she said tightly. "I was accused of having magic and narrowly escaped with my life."</p><p>Elyan swallowed. He knew she was using her words like swords in this moment, pointing out that his absence had not rid the family of magic's curse.</p><p>"Wait," he said suddenly as her words cut through to him. "You were nearly killed for sorcery? Guinevere, how on earth?"</p><p>"Father was healed when an Afanc poisoned the water in Camelot," Gwen said crisply. "I was accused of using magic to heal him. I came within hours of my execution, Elyan. And I was alone."</p><p>Elyan reached over and bundled his sister into his arms.</p><p>"I'm sorry, Gwen," he whispered, trying not to cry. "I truly am sorry. I'll never leave you alone again."</p><p>Gwen didn't say anything, but she turned into his embrace and clung to him, and it felt as though in that embrace some old ghosts were laid to rest at last.</p><p>When they let go, Gwen stood up, walked over to a chest, and pulled out a whole stack of shirts, some white, some colored. She came over and dropped them on his lap with a thump.</p><p>"What are these?" Elyan asked, picking one up and glancing at the sewing. He recognized Gwen's neat stitches at once.</p><p>"I never stopped sewing you shirts," Gwen told him. "Now that you're at home, you have to wear them."</p><p>Elyan looked up at her, his lap covered in shirts, and matched the little smile he saw on her face. He felt forgiven.</p><p>"There's nothing else I'd wear," he said.</p><p>Back in Camelot, Elyan wore Gwen's shirts and worked his father's forge and finally felt like he was home. The world was green with hints of yellow and gold around him.</p><p> </p><p>The truth had dawned on Elyan shortly after he had realized that the people who crashed into his house weren't the undead coming to kill him, but he waited until he and Gwaine were alone to say it.</p><p>"You're the Gwaine," he said then, quietly.</p><p>"I'm flattered that you think I'm the only one with this name, but I'm afraid you're wrong," Gwaine said lightly.</p><p>"I don't mean that," Elyan retorted, as he led Gwaine through the shadowy hallways toward the dungeons he had once been terrified of disappearing into. "You're the Gwaine, the one all the girls whisper about in hope and tell stories about. The one every shady man in the underworld fears."</p><p>"I see my reputation proceeds me," Gwaine replied, a touch more serious this time. "May I ask how you became acquainted with the legend of Gwaine, quite different, may I add, from the man you see before you?"</p><p>He was still almost infuriatingly lighthearted, but in a moment Elyan understood his question and gripped his sword handle with fury.</p><p>"I was never a part of the underworld," he said hotly. "But I traveled enough to pick up on the legend. Trust me, I would never deal in those who had no will of their own in the matter."</p><p>"Calm down, your highness," Gwaine teased him, but Elyan doubted he was imagining relief under the words. "I'm sure you were always an upstanding traveler."</p><p>"You did great work," Elyan told him, firmly, going back to his original point of thanking Gwaine for all he had done.</p><p>Gwaine turned a sudden bright smile on him, which made him think maybe his words were appreciated a bit, before Gwaine said, "Much as I'd like to prolong this moment of sentiment, perhaps we could get to work and try finding the king?"</p><p>Elyan shook his head as he chased Gwaine down the hallway. Why was it not in the least surprising that the Gwaine would be as infuriating in person as the legend claimed. Somehow he was just the man Elyan would expect to run around with Merlin and Arthur.</p><p> </p><p>"I'll do something that my father won't approve of," Arthur said thoughtfully.</p><p>Elyan had never expected to become a knight, not in his wildest dreams. But there was a small part of him that whispered that he had never known a knight in Camelot to be accused of magic, and perhaps at last he and his sister would be safe. And this would be a way to make Gwen proud.</p><p>Elyan took the taps of the sword and stood with pride.</p><p> </p><p>"Gwaine?" Elyan called hesitantly. "Gwaine? You still alive?"</p><p>Surely, surely somehow if the rest of them had made it through, the famous Gwaine could not have fallen to the undead army. He forgot the pain in his arm for a moment in the tension.</p><p>"What do you think?" Gwaine asked, coming out of the hallway. "And that's Sir Gwaine to you."</p><p>Elyan hid his relief under a huff of faint laughter and let that comment pass. That they were all alive was an almost impossible miracle, but annoying as he could be, Elyan wouldn't have wished Gwaine dead for anything.</p><p> </p><p>There was a fellowship among all the knights, but the closest brotherhood Elyan had was with the knights who had been at the Round Table. They understood each other and trusted each other in a way that wasn't quite there with anyone else.</p><p>Perhaps it was the bonds from charging into a battle they had no hope of winning together. Perhaps it was the fact that they had stood together in the castle of the ancient kings, pledged themselves specifically to Arthur (not Uther) after he spoke of his dreams for the kingdom.</p><p>Perhaps it was the fact that all of them but Leon were common born.</p><p>This quickly became a problem among the rest of the knights, all of whom were nobly born. Perhaps it wouldn't have been a problem were it not for Lancelot, but when the four new knights came to the field for their first practice sparring session, one of the old knights looked narrowly at Lancelot.</p><p>"Hey," he called out, "aren't you the one who forged a seal of nobility to weasel your way into the noble ranks of the knights a while ago?"</p><p>Elyan could hardly believe that Lancelot, who struck him as one of the most chivalrous men ever to live, would have done something like that, but looking sideways at him he saw Lancelot turn very pale and drop his head.</p><p>"Who let him back here?" another knight heckled. "Go home. We have no need of commoners here!"</p><p>"He was knighted by Prince Arthur himself," Percival put in somewhat unexpectedly. He crossed his massive bare arms over his chest, muscles bulging.</p><p>There was a moment of silence where the hecklers were intimidated into silence before one of them pushed forward.</p><p>"Apparently Prince Arthur is willing to break from his father's noble tradition, then," he spat. "What, are the rest of you common born too?"</p><p>"That one there is," another knight cackled, pointing at Elyan. "He's the son of Tom the blacksmith, what was executed for magic. I've seen him at the forge."</p><p>Elyan's vision went red with fury, and he nearly drew his sword. Gwaine, though, gave a sharp laugh and stepped forward, hand on his own sword hilt.</p><p>"And what does it matter if he is?" he demanded. "He has the right to be here every bit as much as filthy prigs like you."</p><p>"What, you're common born too?" the knight snarled. "All of you together in a clump, defending each other."</p><p>"I stand by them," Gwaine shot back without hesitation.</p><p>He had not, Elyan noted, quite identified himself as common born, and with the deft way Gwaine could play around the truth, he didn't doubt the distinction was important. But at the moment he was too glad of the unflinching support to be picky.</p><p>One of the other knights stepped forward, twirling his sword. "You think you have the right to be here?" he demanded. "Come on and prove it, then."</p><p>Gwaine stopped the twirling of the sword in a second, having drawn his own almost faster than the eye could follow. The next moment the four of them were engaged in a fierce brawl with the heckling knights. Elyan knew he was a better fighter than his opponent, but he didn't want to turn this into a fight to the death. He flung his opponent's sword out of his hand, copying the twisting motion he'd seen Gwaine use, and was instantly met with another opponent. The common born knights were greatky outnumbered.</p><p>"Stop, stop, <em>stop!"</em> came the roar of Leon's voice over the clashing swords and grunting men. Elyan's opponent backed off, and Elyan took a step back to see Leon coming up at a full run.</p><p>"What on earth is going on here?" he demanded sternly. "You are knights, not drunken brawlers, and this is a sparring grounds, not a battlefield! What is the meaning of this?"</p><p>"Sir, they are common born," one of the leading hecklers said quickly. "Not worthy to step onto this sacred ground, where every knight has been nobly born."</p><p>Elyan looked quickly to Leon to see if he would stand with his old men or with them. Leon's eyes were blazing, and he moved to stand alongside the other knights of the round table.</p><p>"All our fathers were common born before the King made them noblemen, if you recall," he said sharply. "And I might remind you who it was that fought to retake Camelot from the recent invasion. I was proud to fight alongside these men. It was Prince Regent Arthur himself who knighted them, and as you might recall it was not so many days ago that we stood side by side against the Lady Morgana when she tried to force us to forswear our oaths to the King and the Prince. I proudly stood alongside you in those days, but I will leave you to stand alone if you so quickly forget to whom your loyalty belongs."</p><p>There were a great number of ashamed faces before them now, and one by one the hecklers slunk quietly away.</p><p>"Thank you, Leon," Elyan said, when they had all left.</p><p>"No more than my duty," Leon said. "I'm sorry they behaved in such an unchivalrous way."</p><p>"It was my fault," Lancelot said quietly. "I shouldn't have come back here after my deception before."</p><p>Leon stepped to stand in front of Lancelot. "Look at me, Lancelot," he said quietly, and waited until the younger man obeyed.</p><p>"Do you think I didn't remember your previous visit to Camelot the moment I laid eyes on you this time?" he asked. Lancelot flinched and nearly looked away again, but Leon pressed on, "I remembered a man who fought more ably and nobly than most of the other men I'd met in all my years as a knight, a man who risked his life to fight for Camelot after knowing he was to be banished anyway. I was proud to fight by your side against the undead army, and I'm proud to fight beside you against any army we face in the future. And I'll drub any pretentious knight-errant who says otherwise."</p><p>"And so will I," Gwaine said proudly, clapping Lancelot on the shoulder. Percival rested an arm on Lancelot's other shoulder and didn't seem to need to say anything more. Elyan reached out and clasped arms with Lancelot.</p><p>"I would die by your side," he said.</p><p>"Now, now, no need to make this moment morbid," Gwaine protested. "We all lived against an undead army; who says we're going to die?"</p><p>But Lancelot was blinking tears hastily out of his eyes. "Thank you all," he said.</p><p>"Of course," Gwaine answered cheerfully. "Now shall you show us what this sparring thing is all about, Sir Leon?"</p><p> </p><p>That wasn't the end of the matter, unfortunately, though there was never organized heckling again as there had been that day. There was subtler hints of displeasure, however; the noble knights refused to spar with the common knights on every occasion they could, kicked practice helmets into the mud, made snide comments behind backs.</p><p>There was a reason Elyan and Gwaine didn't trust anyone but the knights of the Round Table to stand at their backs.</p><p>Arthur and Leon repulsed these attacks every chance they could, by pointedly sparring with the common knights and including them in patrols and important missions alike. Gwaine stayed by Elyan, Lancelot, and Percival, even when Elyan was pretty sure he had a secret he could have revealed that would have spared him all the annoyances in a moment. Many of the knights of noble birth even stood by the four of them and joined Leon and Arthur in pointedly opposing those who made an issue of the matter.</p><p>There really was a brotherhood among the knights that Elyan had never known before. Red became the color of adventure and brotherhood.</p><p>Finally, one day at the end of a sparring session Arthur jumped up on a stool in front of all the knights.</p><p>"Listen to me," he said, when everyone was silent. "I have made men of common birth knights, and will continue to do so. Anyone who takes issue with it also takes issue with me, and I do not trust you to fight my battles. Any man who cannot deal with this may step down from being a knight now. There will be no further consequences to your decision; you will not be branded a traitor, and you may keep your chain mail and your sword and draw full pay for this month. Anyone who will not fight alongside a common born knight is welcome to leave now."</p><p>There was silence so deep that Elyan could hear the clicks of individual links in the chain mail as Percival, standing beside him, uncrossed his arms and let them fall to his sides.</p><p>No one moved.</p><p>"Very well," Arthur said. "Anyone who hears a knight grumble about this matter may bring the matter to me. On the testimony of two or three witnesses, the knight who grumbles will be removed from his knighthood under the conditions named."</p><p>And he jumped down from his stool and walked briskly off the field. Merlin, who had come down with him that day, tagged off after him, grinning all over his face.</p><p>There was an intensely uncomfortable silence among all the knights for a very long moment; then silently they began to disperse. Lancelot, Elyan, Percival, and Gwaine exchanged grins.</p><p>"I knew I picked a good noble to risk dying for," Gwaine remarked.</p><p>There were some knights who were removed in the days following, since to Elyan's surprise Arthur followed up on the order. The four of them didn't even bring any of them in; it was other noble born knights who brought the worst offenders of their fellows to the Prince Regent. After a few firings, the rest learned to keep their mouths tightly shut.</p><p>After that, Elyan learned to trust the rest of those who were already knights a good deal more, and the world was washed in the red of brotherhood and adventure and loyalty. Gwen sewed all the shirts he wore under his armor, and Elyan thought the world was warmer than it had been since his early childhood.</p><p> </p><p>That lasted for one glorious year, before Lancelot died.</p><p>Knights died frequently, and Elyan knew that. He just hadn't thought it would happen so soon to their miracle group. Losing one of the knights he relied on the most washed the red into a faded orange.</p><p>But it eventually became a vibrant orange, reminiscent of the gold of his childhood, and life was still good.</p><p> </p><p>Elyan never really teased Merlin.</p><p>It wasn't that he didn't tease people – Gwen would disabuse you of that notion in two seconds flat. It wasn't that he didn't tease the other knights on occasion, or that he didn't see himself as close to Merlin.</p><p>It was that he knew there was a power imbalance there. Merlin was a servant, and they were knights. Not that it mattered as far as worth was concerned; Elyan knew Merlin was worth a dozen knights of his acquaintance, and he would believe Merlin's word over a knight's in an instant. Not that out in the woods it really mattered how they treated each other.</p><p>It was just that there was a level on which it made a difference. If one of the knights ever went too far, Merlin had no real recourse to do anything but sit there and take it. And Elyan knew how it felt to be in those shoes; he'd lived in them for most of his life until the most unexpected moment of his life when he became a knight. When someone above you was teasing you good-naturedly, there was a sense of pleasure because you knew they thought you on their level enough to tease, but there was a hint of fear somewhere buried underneath that they would take it too far, trample over all the lines you built around yourself, and when they did you'd have no recourse.</p><p>Merlin didn't seem to mind the teasing generally; sometimes it lightened and lifted the shadows in his eyes. But Elyan was too familiar with being on the other side of the divide to tease him.</p><p>Besides, Merlin had been there for Gwen when Elyan had failed her, and he could never forget that. Even if he and Gwen had made up and were closer now than they had been since their early childhood, he hadn't been there for her for those four years, and Merlin had been there for three of them. Elyan was silently grateful for that.</p><p> </p><p>The years came and went, and Elyan had his home with Gwen and his brotherhood with the knights and his loyalty to Arthur. Percival was his favorite of the knights, with his dry humor, wise words, and quiet loyalty that meant a good deal to Elyan. Gwaine – he loved Gwaine, but the man could drive him nuts in less than an hour. And Leon remained loyal to the knights of the round table above any others, which Elyan never ceased to find a bit remarkable.</p><p>When Gwen appeared to cheat on Arthur with Lancelot, Elyan was more distressed than he had been in years. Too upset to try figuring out which side to support, he chose the easy way out and sided with Arthur. Perhaps he should have sided with his sister, but she had been engaged to Arthur, and she had had no right to betray him.</p><p>Still, the day she left Camelot, he wept alone.</p><p>Gwen wrote him though, within a few days of leaving Camelot, explaining the odd compulsion that had led her to Lancelot and begging his forgiveness. Elyan wrote back at once, unable to keep from forgiving her, and asked if she wanted him to join her. When Gwen wrote back, she refused, saying that his place was by Arthur's side and she was alright with Merlin's mother.</p><p>Still, the two of them wrote back and forth continually until the day she and Arthur reunited. If Gwen was going to avoid his past mistake of not writing anything, Elyan was going to answer every letter she sent. It wasn't until she came back to Camelot that the rich yellow hues returned to the orange.</p><p> </p><p>The first sign Elyan had that drinking the water in the weird place with all the flags had done anything to him was that he stopped seeing any colors.</p><p>Afterwards, he remembered far more than anyone, perhaps, expected. No one asked, and Elyan kept his views to himself until Gwen came back to Camelot.</p><p>He remembered Merlin breaking him out of the cells after he had nearly beaten him into the ground with his sword. He remembered Leon and Percival and Gwaine promising that they were his friends when he was out of his mind. He remembered Gwaine rushing into his room the moment he cried out, acting out of kindness and letting him keep his secrets. He remembered Arthur on his knees, facing what he had done with courage and weeping for the loss, catching Elyan when he stumbled even if moments before he had nearly been killed by him. And he was deeply grateful for the brotherhood offered in all of it.</p><p>But more than anything, he remembered the druid boy.</p><p>He had never learned the boy's name, and that was what haunted him the most afterwards. The boy deserved to have someone remember his name, and he would never be able to do that for him.</p><p>Before they stumbled across the shrine, Elyan disliked magic. He had fled Camelot to avoid being called up on suspicion of it; his sister had nearly been killed by those who claimed she had it; his father had died for trading with someone who had it. He had fought an unnatural undead army created by magic in his first battle as a knight; he had struggled with witches and sorcerers in unfair battles, and he couldn't see magic as anything but corrupt and hateful.</p><p>And then the druid boy possessed him.</p><p>The first afternoon after the spirit touched him as he grappled with Gwaine, as he lay insensate to the world (a fact he later learned from Gaius), the little spirit shared its life with him.</p><p>It was a beautiful life, a life as golden as Elyan's own had been when he was this boy's age. It was a life with parents and siblings, laughter and friendship and love.</p><p>And magic.</p><p>The boy had magic, his family had magic, and no one feared it. It could do beautiful and useful things; his mother used it continually in cooking, his sister used it to straighten her long locks of hair, his father used it to chase illness out of little children's bodies. The whole camp used it. Sometimes, if they were lucky, at night the camp bard would make his stories dance in the sparks above the fires as he sang.</p><p>And then the knights of Camelot came.</p><p>That was a black day, a day filled with terror and horror, blood and screams and death. Somewhere in the background, beyond the rampaging knights, the part of Elyan that was still himself caught a glimpse of Arthur standing frozen and was absolutely horrified.</p><p><em>Yes,</em> the boy druid confirmed viciously. <em>He was the one who led the attack. My blood is on his hands.</em></p><p>The boy had died by drowning. He had been fleeing, and one of the knights had scooped him up, dumped him in the well, and held him there until he could no longer breathe.</p><p>The boy was undoubtedly vengeful, driving Elyan to kill the king. He was also terrified, moving away from Elyan's hand until Elyan proved he wouldn't hurt him.</p><p>And he was strangely gentle. When the dripping boy on Elyan's floor pleaded with him not to be angry, Elyan couldn't see a spirit or a ghost. All he could see was a child, terrified of the adults who had hurt him. He gathered the boy into a hug and felt the child's minute trembling cease against him as he tried to warm the boy up.</p><p>When King Arthur pleaded forgiveness, claiming the wrong as his own through tears and vowing that the druids would be free, facing his own death with no protests but an apology, the druid boy forgave.</p><p>And then he wanted Arthur to know the comfort that he himself had received from being hugged. With the moment Elyan had wrapped his arms around the boy in mind, he drew Arthur to his feet and flung his arms around him, trying to soothe his terror and let him breathe.</p><p>When he fled upwards, leaving Elyan and joining his family once again, the druid boy left Elyan all his memories.</p><p>It took Elyan a long time to sort through all of them, as well as to sort through the disorientation of the whole event. But if there was one thing he took out of it with absolute certainty, it was that he no longer hated magic.</p><p> </p><p>When Gwen came back to Camelot, she was the first one he talked to about the whole thing. He was still afraid of talking to anyone else about magic in Camelot, even if Arthur had sworn to persecute the druids no more, but he and Gwen had always been able to tell each other anything, even when they were squabbling with each other.</p><p>Gwen disliked and feared magic nearly as he did, but she was willing to listen. Elyan told her the story as well as he could, trying to impart not just the facts but what it felt like to hold a trembling, drowned druid child in your arms, what it felt like to be that child.</p><p>Gwen didn't say much at the time. But later on, when Elyan watched her make magic legal on the surface of the lake, he wondered how much that conversation had had to do with the decision.</p><p>He watched the druid camps rejoice, terrified and overjoyed all at once, as what they were as well as who they were finally became legal, and let the tears run unabashed down his cheeks. Arthur had seen to it that the outright persecution of the druids was stopped, but this made it certain once and forever that no more small druid boys would die because of Camelot.</p><p>Perhaps Arthur had gotten the correct idea about hugs in that forest after all, for he tugged Elyan into one under the lake and held him until he stopped sobbing.</p><p> </p><p>Elyan watched his sister marry Arthur and become queen of Camelot, and could not even describe how he was feeling. The world, for once, was awash with a gold as bright as that of his early childhood, and for a moment everything was beautiful.</p><p> </p><p>There came a time, several years after Gwen became queen, that she and Elyan started talking about their father. It had been years, somehow, since they had visited the place where he lay buried by their mother's side, and they rode out with Leon, Percival, and Gwaine as escorts to visit it.</p><p>This time when they spoke of their father, there was love and not bitterness in Gwen's voice, as there had been when they first talked of his passing years ago. This time she let him wrap his arm around her shoulders and slipped her hand into his. The last vestiges of old bitter memories slipped away.</p><p>And then Gwen disappeared riding away from the snakes on Elyan's command.</p><p>Elyan was nearly driven to distraction in the days that followed, as the knights of the Round Table sought after Gwen with Arthur and Merlin. Arthur was even more distracted than he.</p><p>When he made it to the last room in the Dark Tower, it was just him, Gwen, and the sword enchanted to kill her rescuer.</p><p>No sword could have stopped Elyan from rescuing Gwen.</p><p>There was no one he was more honored to lay down his life for.</p><p>All he could think, as he lay on his sister's lap gasping out his last breaths, was that he was finally going to commit the final betrayal and leave her behind, alone, the last surviving member of their family.</p><p>"Father would be proud of you," Gwen whispered through her tears.</p><p>Maybe, just maybe, his parents wouldn't hate him for leaving Gwen alone.</p><p>He lifted his hand, and Gwen slipped hers quickly into it. Elyan clung to her hand with all the strength he had.</p><p>"And of you," he gasped. "So proud."</p><p><em>And so would Mother,</em> he thought, his mind flitting back to those golden days as the colors turned to black, but he had no breath or strength to say it.</p><p>Elyan died on his sister's lap, wearing a shirt she had made under the armor.</p><p> </p><p>"Merlin has magic?" Elyan exclaimed, shocked.</p><p>He was still trying to adjust to being stuck in a lake, waiting to go back to Camelot at some indeterminate point in the future, along with Lancelot and the mysterious Lady of the Lake he had barely seen. His worldview had been shaken enough in the last few days; he scarcely needed realizing Merlin had magic as he and Arthur fought bandits to upend his world.</p><p>Lancelot, watching the panorama on the underside of the surface of the lake with him, gave him a sidelong look. "You never realized?" he asked.</p><p>"You did?" Elyan demanded incredulously.</p><p>"He lit my spear with magical fire so I could kill a griffin a few days after I met him," Lancelot said quietly. "I'd seen magic before. It wasn't so hard to put together."</p><p>"He never did anything like that with me, I suppose," Elyan said, laughing a little shakily.</p><p>Lancelot was watching him very closely. "Does that change your view of him?" he asked quietly.</p><p>Elyan had to think for a moment. "I knew he had secrets," he admitted, "and I trusted him anyway." He suddenly remembered the trembling young druid boy, the sense of absolute terror in his memories of the day he drowned, and wondered how afraid Merlin felt every day – and in that moment, he absolutely forgave him for never telling anyone. "The only thing it changes," he said, "is how powerful I suddenly realize Merlin is."</p><p>Lancelot relaxed beside him, and returned to watching the images with a smile playing around his lips. "I think," he said, "that Merlin is more powerful than any of us realize."</p><p> </p><p>Over the years spent in the lake, Elyan watched his nephew grow up without him and without his father, but he was far less rebellious than Elyan had been when he was parentless. Perhaps it was because Amhar had never known his father; perhaps it was because Merlin acted as father and uncle both, with the help of Leon and Percival.</p><p>Merlin was also supporting Gwen in every way he could, from dealing with magical threats to acting as a sort of spymaster behind the scenes. He was the adult who spent the most time with her, from preparing for various court meetings to simple conversations, and Elyan realized that once again Merlin was fulfilling the role of brother that he could not play to Gwen.</p><p>He felt once again an odd mixture of gratefulness and jealousy. The lake was a world of green and blue and a touch of gray, with only hints of orange without any gold peeping around the edges.</p><p> </p><p>When they were finally let out of the lake, Elyan was the second to go and was incredibly impatient by the time his time came.</p><p>Gwen and the others were having a picnic near Camelot when Elyan found them, and Gwen was the first to leap up and crash into his arms.</p><p>This time, they didn't have an evil king leering in the background as they reunited. This time, Elyan's absence had been significantly longer than four years. This time, neither had any inhibitions about clinging to one another as though the world would end and sobbing as they clung.</p><p>"Gwen," he said at last, choking on a sob, "you've been such a fantastic queen."</p><p>Her only response was to sob and cling tighter to him.</p><p>Then the others were there, and Elyan was surrounded by the hugs of those he had loved and lost in a different way than they had lost him. And his young nephew, whom he had proudly watched grow but had never met, was staring at him as though at a complete stranger.</p><p>It would take time for Camelot to become home again, more time than it had the last time he had come back to it, but Elyan was determined to make it a home again.</p><p> </p><p>All the Knights of the Round Table were back again, and bright red flooded back into Elyan's world almost effortlessly as they bantered together, rode out together, fought together. Merlin was fully a part of the group now, one of them in a distinct but definite way. The first time Elyan swiped his water bottle on the trail and took a long drink, Merlin gave him a look of betrayal, and Elyan gave him a wide grin.</p><p>He gave it back with more than half of the water left, however, because he wasn't Gwaine and because he never wanted to be unkind to Merlin, even if he didn't mind teasing him now.</p><p> </p><p>Elyan found Gwen alone in her chambers at midmorning one day and let himself in. She looked up from a mound of papers and smiled.</p><p>"What do you want?" she asked.</p><p>Elyan tossed himself into a chair near her. "Can't a man want to spend time with his favorite sister?" he asked her.</p><p>"Favorite sister," Gwen mocked under her breath. "Of course he can, but it's a bit of a problem if said sister has a mountain of papers to form opinions about before taking them to the lords in two hours."</p><p>"Isn't Arthur going to help you form said opinions?" Elyan asked.</p><p>Gwen gave him a rather narrow-eyed look. "These are matters pertaining strictly to Camelot," she said. "And they're little things, like should a lord be allowed to divert a river through his garden for his own pleasure if it might affect the farmers downstream? Nothing too big or controversial. Although there's nothing the lords can't make controversial," she added ruefully.</p><p>"In that case, maybe your brother may be of service," Elyan told her, and snatched the papers she had been looking over out of her hand in one lightning grab.</p><p>Over her protesting noises, he began to read aloud, making sarcastic comments about the lord's pomposity and varying his voice to add all the interest he could to the dry words. After a moment, Gwen leaned back in her chair and let him read, smiling to herself. Elyan had never been more glad that he had let Gwaine bully him into learning to read effortlessly.</p><p>When he finished the proposal, he and Gwen discussed what she should do and decided that if the lord wanted to divert anything, it had to be a significantly smaller portion of the river that wouldn't affect the farmers. Then Elyan stole the next packet of papers from under her nose and went on reading.</p><p>From that time on, midmornings were Elyan and Gwen's time more often than not. He would read the proposals aloud to her with all the humor he could, they would discuss them, and Gwen would go into council with a game plan for even the smallest of matters. If she didn't happen to have any meetings to prepare for, they would simply sit and talk.</p><p>"What made you decide to free magic?" Elyan asked her quietly one day.</p><p>Gwen looked up at him and smiled just a little.</p><p>"Everything you told me about the druid boy," she said. "That was the day I determined that magic had to be freed. And then of course Merlin having magic."</p><p>Elyan still held all the druid boy's memories, as if in a precious receptacle of a life cut short. He felt a deep sense of relief at Gwen's words, and smiled across at her.</p><p>After a week, Gwen began sewing while he read. She admitted that she had fallen out of the habit over her years as queen, but now that Elyan was reading the papers her hands were free to work.</p><p>It wasn't long before Elyan was again wearing shirts Gwen made for him.</p><p>She expanded it and began making shirts for Arthur and Amhar as well, and occasionally some of the others like Merlin, and designing her own dresses as she had done all her days as a maid. But Elyan never wore anything but Gwen's shirts after she began making them again.</p><p>The yellow in Elyan's world began brightening into gold.</p><p> </p><p>Amhar was a bit of a harder nut to crack, because Elyan hadn't known him in his past life, and Gwaine might be capable of turning watching someone on a lake into a strong friendship, but Elyan had the very odd feeling that one of the people in his life he should know the best was one he knew nothing about.</p><p>He got an idea suddenly one afternoon when Gwen made a comment about their old house and forge in the lower town still being there and in her possession. When Gwen had left the room, he turned to Amhar.</p><p>"Get your cloak," he said. "I'm going to take you to see something."</p><p>"What is it?" Amhar asked, eyeing Elyan through narrowed eyes.</p><p>"You'll see when you get there," Elyan told him. "It's an adventure."</p><p>Amhar's eyes brightened at that, and he dashed off to get his cloak.</p><p>Elyan took him down to the lower town, down to the old house and the forge that he could make his way around blindfolded even now. He showed Amhar how to light the fire in the forge and get it going, patiently teaching his nephew until he could get the flint and steel to make sparks in one stroke. Then he turned to get the iron.</p><p>"Listen, Amhar," he said, "in your family heritage we have a proud tradition of blacksmiths. Your grandfather was a blacksmith, and your great-grandfather, and your great-great-grandfather, and as far back as anyone can remember."</p><p>"But you're a knight," Amhar objected, more as if that was a curiosity than as an actual objection.</p><p>"Your father knighted me," Elyan agreed proudly. "But before that I earned my way by forge-work for years. I never got as good as my father, but I was half-decent. And as a man in our family, it's your family heritage to learn how to work a forge."</p><p>Amhar looked torn between elation and terror for a moment; Elyan decided to give in a bit.</p><p>"You need to learn at least to forge a sword," he said. "I was good at that, and I can teach you. That way a bit of your family legacy on the other side lives on in you."</p><p>Amhar's face lit up. "Alright!" he said cheerfully, and hopped off his high stool to come stand by Elyan. "How do I start?"</p><p>He was an absorbed and attentive pupil throughout the afternoon. When they got back to the palace after eating supper in the town, Amhar skipped off to his parents and began giving them a thorough account of the day.</p><p>"You taught him something, didn't you?" Merlin asked, appearing at Elyan's elbow.</p><p>"How could you tell?" Elyan asked, laughing.</p><p>"He's like that every time I let him watch a magic lesson," Merlin answered, smiling. "He's a curious chap."</p><p>"I started teaching him forge work," Elyan admitted. "He comes from a family of blacksmiths, after all."</p><p>Merlin's face lit with a broad smile. "I thought he should learn something of that legacy," he said, "but of course I never knew anything I could teach him. I'm so glad you're here."</p><p>Elyan felt, for a moment, that the world was burnished gold.</p><p>When Amhar kept at it and learned to be a decent blacksmith of a few things, Elyan felt that he had finally found his opening to connect to his nephew, and to connect his nephew to his legacy.</p><p>When Amhar, in his late teens, forged the sword that he carried everywhere as his involvement in swordplay became more than an academic exercise, Elyan felt he had passed the family tradition on successfully. He was glad.</p><p> </p><p>It occurred to Elyan one day, some time after coming out of the lake, that life had a golden tinge normally now, which was something he couldn't remember happening since his early childhood.</p><p>It was a gold twirled with bright, vibrant red whenever he was with the knights, the two colors distinct from each other with borders of rich orange. It was a gold that deepened into the color that flashed in sorcerers' eyes when he spent time with Gwen or Arthur or Amhar or all three together. It was a gold that gained a flush of pink whenever he was around a certain young lady. There was no hint of gray in the gold.</p><p>Elyan thought that gold was the most beautiful color he had ever known.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Somehow the knight I thought I knew the least about has the longest chapter so far, and I feel I could write more. :) As far as the colors are concerned, I leave it to your imagination whether that's just the way Elyan describes things, or he has some form of synesthesia, or he has a touch of magic for real. Perhaps all three?</p></blockquote></div></div>
</body>
</html>